whenever you hear members of congress talk about any kind of fiscal cliff deal you have to approach it with a sort of believe everything and believe nothing attitude. i think that everybody wants to avoid having taxes go up for all americans as of january 1st but everybody has a price for that. and it, to me, it's about whether or not both sides are looking for a win-win deal, meaning, my opponent wins and i win. or whether both sides or one of the sides are looking for a deal where only i win and you lose and on top of all of that then we have to look at what do they want to include in any sort of deal? are we going to address entitlement reform? are we going to cut spending? are we only trying to deal with the tax cut issue? will we try to address the debt ceiling issue? so there are a lot of moving parts here. jon: it seems the campaign promise of the president to raise taxes on couples making over $250,000 a year, it seems like that almost has to come true in some form for the president and the democrats to swallow a deal? >> i think so. i think the president has been committed to